Zong Rinpoche - Early Life, Education, and Spiritual Lineage

Early Life, Education, and Spiritual Lineage

Zongtrul Jetsun Losang Tsondru Thubten Gyaltsen (or Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, as he is known to ordained and lay disciples) was born in 1905 in the village of Nangsang in the Kham province of eastern Tibet. His father and both his grandfathers were ngakpa, tantric practitioners of the Nyingma tradition, and two previous incarnations of Kyabje Dorje Chang ("Vajradhara, Lord of Refuge," as Kyabje Zong Rinpoche was also known) had taken birth within the Zong-go family: Zongtrul Phuntsok Chopel and Zongtrul Tenpa Chopel (1836-1899 AD).

He went to Lhasa in 1916 when he was eleven years old to study Buddhadharma as presented in Je Tsongkhapa's tradition at Ganden Shartse Monastery, one of the principal Gelug monasteries and seats of learning in Tibet. When he got there, the fourteen-year-old Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche (who was to become one of the main tutors of the 14th Dalai Lama) guided the new student by taking him through his first lesson in elementary dialectics. He was later to become Zong Rinpoche's chief mentor.

Although recognized as a reincarnate Lama, Zong Rinpoche did not have the privileges accorded to modern-day tulkus. He had no benefactor to support him and lived a spartan existence:

Instead of a table from which to read the scriptures, he made do with an empty tea box supported by bricks. He was completely focused on his studies, which he pursued with unfailing courage and diligence. He seemed uninterested in food or drink, surviving on a very simple diet. With his humble lifestyle and shabby robes, often loose and torn from the physicality of the debate ground, he looked like any other boy from the remote province of Kham who had been fortunate enough to attend this prestigious monastic university.

Zong Rinpoche received his full ordination from the Thirteenth Dalai Lama at the Potala Palace. At Ganden, Zong Rinpoche studied the Sutras of the Prajnaparamita, Madhyamika, the Abidharma and the Vinaya. He studied effortlessly and became well known throughout the three great Gelug monasteries of central Tibet, Ganden, Drepung, and Sera as a master of philosophical debate who possessed an extraordinary memory. Upon debating the opening verse of Pramanavarttika, the foremost dissertation on Buddhist logic by the famed seventh-century Indian logician Acharya Dharmakirti, Zong Rinpoche's performance led the famous Geshe "Amdo" Sherab Gyatso to remark: "There would not be a worthier debate on this subject even if Dharmakirti himself were here in person!" After graduating as the highest ranking Lharampa Geshe at the age of only twenty-five in 1929, he moved on to the Tantric College of Gyuto, where he also successfully completed his examinations.

His Spiritual Guide was Trijang Rinpoche. Kyabje Zong Rinpoche often mentioned to his resident students, as an instruction on Guru devotion, that he had never harbored a negative thought for his teacher, Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche, for even a single instant. Trijang Rinpoche's own Spiritual Guide was Pabongka Rinpoche, and Zong Rinpoche deeply revered both Lamas and practiced and promoted their Gelugpa lineage his entire life, including relying upon the Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden:

Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche and Kyabje Ling Rinpoche were tutors to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. They taught His Holiness everything from basic teachings to advanced levels. Kyabje Phabongka passed all of his lineages to Kyabje Trijang Dorje Chang. He often said this in discourses. The purpose of this detailed exposition is to affirm the power of the lineage. If we lose faith in the lineage, we are lost.